‘On duty for 23 hours’; tired truck driver in Oakville, trucking company fined

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June 14, 2022 at 10:28 pm

A truck driver was apologetic after missing a signal to pull in for an inspection in Oakville.

And with good reason: it turned out the operator had been on-duty for 23 hours, which is nine hours longer than is legally allowed in Ontario. Const. Marc Taraso of Halton Regional Police Service (HRPS) traffic enforcement said in a social media post that he found out that the operator had falsified log book entries in an effort to get around the safety regulations.

“After we circle them back in (the) driver apologized and blamed being tired,” Const. Taraso wrote. “I checked their log books & found they falsified entries & had been on duty for 23 hours at time of stop!!”

The driver was charged and was not allowed to drive a truck for 72 hours. Taraso added that company they were driving for — truck drivers are often independent contractors — was also charged for failing to ensure the driver was following Ontario’s hour of service regulations.

The driver and the company were not publicly identified.

Being on-duty includes time when a driver is waiting for a trailer to be loaded. By Ontario law, a truck driver cannot drive after they have been on-duty for 14 hours in a day. They are limited to driving 13 hours in a single day, although there are some exceptions.

Halton officers with the commercial vehicle unit also found at least one more violation on Tuesday. Part of the floor of one rig’s cab was completely rusted out.

“A part of this truck decided not to be present for the inspection,” was how HRPS phrased it.

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